10 Little Rubber Ducks: Art, Counting, and Number Recognition

Duck Week Day One

10 Little Rubber Ducks Art and Matching Game

A week or two ago I went shopping and was excited to find that they are featuring Eric Carle's books through the Kohl's Cares program.  I found two Eric Carle books that we didn't have at home and I quickly brought them home to read to my Eric Carle fan.  He loved both, but the one that inspired me to do a project was 10 Little Rubber Ducks.  I am sure the other will find its way into one of our 365 books sometime soon!

10 Little Rubber Ducks by Eric Carle is a story about 10 rubber ducks that are packed up and put on a cargo ship.  There is a big storm and one box of 10 ducks ends up in the water.  The ducks float away one by one and end up in different places.  The first duck meets a dolphin, another meets a seal, and another meets a whale.  The last rubber duck meets a real duck with her little ducklings and they all swim away together.

I love that this story is based on a newspaper article that Eric Carle read.  The article reported on a ship load of bathtub toys that fell overboard and ended up all over the world!  What a great article to inspire such a delightful little book!

One thing I love about Eric Carle books is that there is always an educational element included in his stories!  In this book he uses ordinal numbers and direction words.  One duck floats west, another floats east.  One duck floats up, the other floats down.  All of these elements make brainstorming ideas to go along with his books so easy!  There are so many different things you can do with this book.  We chose to make a picture similar to the cover that he adores AND turned it into a matching game.

To get ready for this project, I made a duck tracer and cut out 20 ducks.  I also gathered all of the materials (a large rectangle cut out of poster board, blue and green paint, paint brushes, a red marker, 10 googly eyes, glue, and contact paper).

Then we were ready!

My three year old glued eyes on the ducks and colored their beaks red.

Next, he painted his paper to look like the ocean.

He enjoyed painting blue and green at the same time!

Finally, we glued our ducks onto the ocean.  This made such a cute picture, but I wanted him to play with his art, not just hang it up!

 So, I covered the picture with contact paper and wrote one number (1-10) on  each of the ducks.  I took my extra set of ducks and did the same with those.  Ta Da!  A matching game.

I added my son and he matched up the numbers on each of the ducks.  He played one time and when he was done he was ready to play again.  The second time he took turns with his older brother!

Since it is covered with contact paper, I can erase it and use letters, shapes, or colors for him to match.  

Now we can work on number recognition and matching while we are playing with 10 Little Rubber Ducks!

This is only Day One of Duck Week!  We will be featuring one duck project and one duck book each day.  Join our Facebook page or become a member of our blog so you can join us as we celebrate our "unofficial" Duck Week!

Egg Hatching Game

Duck Week Day 2

D is for Duck

Duck Week Day 3

Duck Paintings with Home Made Stamps

Duck Week Day 4

Duck Play Dough

Duck Week Day 5